Atmospheric CO_2 retrieved from ground-based near IR solar spectra

Creators: Yang, Zhonghua; Toon, Geoffrey C.; Margolis, Jack S.; Wennberg, Paul O.

Abstract

The column-averaged volume mixing ratio (VMR) of CO_2 over Kitt Peak, Arizona, has been retrieved from high-resolution solar absorption spectra obtained with the Fourier transform spectrometer on the McMath telescope. Simultaneous column measurements of CO_2 at ∼6300 cm^−1 and O_2 at ∼7900 cm^−1 were ratioed to minimize systematic errors. These column ratios were then scaled by the mean O_2 VMR (0.2095) to yield column-averaged vmrs of CO_2. These display similar behavior to the Mauna Loa in situ surface measurements. During the period 1977–1995, the column-averaged mixing ratio of CO_2 increased at an average rate of 1.49 ± 0.04 ppmv/yr with seasonal variations of ∼7 ppmv peak-to-peak. Our retrievals demonstrate that this remote technique is capable of precisions better than 0.5%.

Additional Information

© 2002 American Geophysical Union. Received 7 December 2001; revised 9 March 2002; accepted 29 March 2002; published 14 May 2002. We thank Yuk Yung, Linda Brown, Jim Randerson, Lloyd Wallace, Bill Livingston, and Mike Dulick for many helpful discussions. Part of this work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Paul Wennberg and Geoffrey Toon acknowledge support from NASA's upper Atmosphere Research Program. Zhonghua Yang is supported with a graduate research assistantship funded by NASA's ACMAP program (NAG5-11739).

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